In the past year, Verbatim has gone on a tear, solidifying their hold on several market segments, and moving boldly into new ones.

A market segment that Verbatim obviously views as important is the portable hard drive space.

The Verbatim InSight 500 GB portable hard drive is one innovation the company has brought to market recently.

This is a nicely styled, fast, and extremely quiet portable hard drive. It came in a well-padded retail box, with a USB-to-mini-USB cable – the drive has a mini-USB interface, and a quick start guide. Nero BackItUp soft was pre-installed on the hard drive.

Apart from the very sleek styling, the InSight has an always-on LCD display that gives you notification of the drive name and remaining free space on the drive – whether the drive is powered or not.

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Over the past year, we have heard of HP’s Converged Infrastructure vision.

Today, HP has opened the kimono just a little bit wider, and laid some cards on the table for all to see.

What is HP Converged Infrastructure?HP Converged Infrastructure calls for the end-to-end virtualization of resources in the data center and unification under common management. With HP Virtual Resource Pools, modular standards-based technology assets can be quickly assigned or repurposed to support any workload or application need from enterprise, to cloud and high performance computing applications.

What is it with these smart people selling out for a lot of moola, pulling the ripcord and ejecting when the new owners of their respective ‘babies’ start ignoring them, then whining about how they would like to buy their ‘baby’ back? The Skype babies come to mind….

At The Orbiting O’Odua today, I received a new HP StorageWorks Data Vault x510 for review.

Running the Windows Home Server Operating system, but optimized for business, the Data Vault x510 represents the second WHS-based device being reviewed here at the O’Odua. The other device is an Acer Aspire A340 Windows Home Server. The Aspire A340 is a home device.

Netbooks are all the rage nowadays. They are cheap, accessible, and seemingly everywhere

However, until the release of Windows 7, most of these devices have come with Windows XP based on the heavy resource requirements if Windows Vista™.

Well, now there is Windows 7.

In January 2009, I received an HP Mini 1000 Mie Edition for review as part of a social media program run by Ivy Worldwide (formerly known as BuzzCorps).

This was the least-powered version of the Mini 1000 series. It was equipped with a 1 GHz Intel Atom processor, integrated graphics, 1 GB of RAM, and a 16 GB SSD (solid state disk). The unit came with a customized Ubuntu Linux.

To be fair, I decided to give Linux a go. I used Ubuntu for a few weeks until driver issues forced me to return to the Light. Of Windows, that is…(read more)

One of the guilty pleasures most of us enjoy nowadays is that of being armature photographers, armed with our cellphone cameras, looking for the next doofus who would make our production the next viral hit on the Internet.

While it is very good to have a crazy-big, wicked-fast color laser printer such as the HP Color LaserJet CP6015 or the award winning CM6040f, most smaller businesses would only have the resources for a desktop multifunction device (MFC), also known as all-in-ones (AIO).

For those smaller companies or needs, Epson has the WorkForce line of MFCs. At AbsolutelyWindows, we have three of these devices in our review inventory: the WorkForce 310, WorkForce 600, and WorkForce 610 all-in-ones.

We are reviewing the WorkForce 310 here.

The Epson WorkForce 310 is a small MFC created for businesses. Part of the WorkForce line, the 310 is, in Epson terminology, a 4-in-1 printer, giving the user print, copy, scan, and fax functionality.

Joe Davidson Designs, of Ontario, Canada, is the designer of all logos, artwork, and other graphics used by Logikworx, and all associated and affiliated companies.

Joe is very good at what he does, and goes beyond the task by constantly refining the designs, sometimes for weeks after the ‘final’ product was delivered. (I know, that part costs money, re-doing the documents.)

A few friends had asked about the new AbsolutelyWindows, SmallBizWindows, and Logikworx logos, so I asked the normally shy Joe to provide a bio.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Not just as a hugely successful and profitable software company, but as a company that employs some of the most brilliant people on Terra; from the actual foot soldiers (the Microserfs) to the wonks at Microsoft Research.

Unfortunately, this penchant for hiring brainiacs seemingly does not extend to their marketing types…(read more)

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

For a company that prides itself on doing the right thing at the right time – witness their seeming acquiescence for over three years, to the totally inaccurate I’m a PC, I’m a Mac ads from Apple, Microsoft sure fubar’d this incident.

What went wrong?

For the past week, I have watched and listened as absolutely no Microsoft C-level executive stepped up to the plate, and owned the meltdown, on behalf of Microsoft, the company…(read more)

Monday, August 31, 2009

Last month, we introduced the HP TouchSmart dx9000 giveaway to a lucky winner who develops a great business-ready application. This baby is up for grabs—it could be all yours! All you need to do create a touch app that businesses can use.

Do you remember in the old, campy horror flicks, where the hero/heroine uses a sharpened silver implement, usually of the improvised type, to continually stab the evil zombie fiend, while insanely chanting, die, die, die?

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

One of the most intrepid companies out there in the Windows space is Stardock, with the impressive range of customization products that allow for personalization of Windows to the nth degree…(read more)